Hello, Dear Reader, and welcome back to my ongoing blog covering my competitive and hobby journeys through 2022. Last time around I fired up the muscle wizards and took them to another RTT, finishing 4th after a close loss on the final table to Carmine’s Adepta Sororitas. This week I’m prepping for Warzone Houston. By the time this publishes, I’ll be at the event, so go ahead and wish me luck or root for me if you see me on stream.

WZH Prep Checklist

Generally, there are five things I needed to do before the event this weekend:

1. Reconfigure my list. I’m not super happy with the Leviathan and I think the list could be a bit better, particularly when it comes to scoring non-codex secondary objectives.
2. Practice with the final list. Probably the most important step. I don’t need a lot ofv games at this point, but I do need to see how the list feels with the updated units, especially if I remove a Leviathan.
3. Practice on WZH terrain. I’ve got the player pack, so it’s worth acquainting myself with the layouts. This will overlap with #2.
4. Paint any new model additions. I’m likely to add a warpflamer or two, which will mean painting new models.
5. Touch up the existing models in the army. I’m trying a bit harder for top paint scores this weekend now that I think top 10 hobby track is doable.

Let’s go through these in that order.

Updating My List

After my last event, I had some real reservations about the list. The Leviathan, though very pretty and generally a trooper, was not actually doing much for me in games. His best efforts would usually amount to a lucky meltagun shot and otherwise he wasn’t really the melee counter-threat I needed. Plus, he was a lot of points that could be better spent elsewhere, plus he cost 1 CP to field. Cutting him would free up 220 points, which I could spend on some additional warpflamers, a third Chaos Spawn (allowing that unit to score Engage on All Fronts and generally just be a little bit more of a threat), and either a fifth unit of Rubrics or a Terminator Sorcerer, which came out to roughly the same cost. Either option would also leave me some extra points for either unit upgrades or another Warpflamer.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of each:

More Rubrics

One option is taking another unit of 5 rubrics, potentially with Warpflamers. I only have a unit of five Warpflamers painted currently, so taking another five would mean adding a hefty painting load.

Pros: I’ve seen quite a few armies take five or six units of Rubrics now. The Rubrics give you a lot of extra mobility thanks to having the ability to cast Sorcerous Facade in Cult of Change, plus each unit is worth two extra cabal points. More units also means I can spread out more and have better board control.

Cons: The value of a unit of Rubrics – especially with only five models – otherwise isn’t all that high: Most of the super-rubric-heavy armies take multiple units of Warpflamers, which come out to a higher per-model cost. Also, Rubrics can’t do psychic actions and only get one cast. There’s another alternative here which is units of Cultists or Tzaangors, but neither was really something I felt I needed.

Terminator Sorcerer

The Thousand Sons Codex allows me to take additional Sorcerers and Terminator Sorcerers without using a Force Organization Slot. This would be one Terminator Sorcerer.

Pros: The Terminator Sorcerer is pretty durable (though he lacks All is Dust) and easy to protect, plus he can teleport onto the battlefield and cast Sorcerous Facade for mobility. As a character, he gives me an additional psychic action doer, and I can upgrade him to cast and action in the same round. He also gets two casts, and having an inferno combi-bolter gives him basically the same shooting output as a unit of five bolter rubrics. He’s also worth two cabal points.

Cons: The Terminator Sorcerer isn’t ObSec and doesn’t do anything for me if I have to resort to Engage, since he’s not a scoring unit. He also doesn’t really want to be separated from the rest of the army, and he’s not much of a force multiplier. A fifth character also makes me vulnerable to Assassination, though most of the time that’s a trap, so this may be more of a Pro than a Con.

The Decision

Ultimately I chose to go with the Terminator Sorcerer, as the extra action cast can be pretty important and he gave me another character to dump a relic onto that wasn’t the Infernal Master. Also, I already had one converted and painted, and the converted aspect is important because some of the ITC/Texas hobby rubrics I’ve seen require you to have conversions in order to score max points.

The List

Here’s what I ended up going with for my practice game and submitted to WZH:

My Thousand Sons - Click to Expand

This list is a bit more versatile than the leviathan version, with additional mobility on Ahriman, the ability to action and shoot on the other Terminator unit, and redundancy on the Psyker characters – though I’m not entirely sure a Shaman and a Terminator Sorcerer is the right play. It’s also packing an additional spawn and two more warpflamers, to help smooth out the variance on that unit and prevent me from low-rolling myself into bad situations when they teleport in to wreck an enemy unit.

The Practice Game

OK I had the list; next it was time to get some practice in with it. Fortunately my friend Erik was up for another game last Friday night to prep for his RTT the next day. Having given up a bit on Craftworlds, Erik shifted back to Harlequins. They’re a very strong army, though post-nerfs and some recent releases there are some matchups they struggle with.

[expand title=”Erik’s List – click to expand”]

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Aeldari – Harlequins) [71 PL, 4CP, 1,635pts] ++

Saedath Characterisation: Light: Blaze of Light

+ HQ +

Shadowseer [5 PL, 105pts]: 5. Shards of Light (Witchfire), 6. Webway Dance (Aura) (Blessing), Neuro Disruptor

Troupe Master [4 PL, -2CP, 90pts]: 3: A Foot in the Future, Harlequin’s Kiss, Neuro Disruptor, Stratagem: Favoured of the Laughing God, Stratagem: Treasures of the Aeldari, Warlord
. Cegorach’s Rose

+ Troops +

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

+ Elites +

Death Jester [4 PL, 90pts]: Rift Ghoul

Solitaire [6 PL, 110pts]

+ Fast Attack +

Skyweavers [4 PL, 100pts]
. Skyweaver: Skyweaver Haywire Cannon, Star Bolas
. Skyweaver: Skyweaver Haywire Cannon, Star Bolas

+ Dedicated Transport +

Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]
Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]
Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]
Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]
Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]
Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]

++ Patrol Detachment -2CP (Aeldari – Harlequins) [17 PL, -2CP, 365pts] ++

Saedath Characterisation: Light

+ HQ +

Shadowseer [5 PL, 105pts]: 1. Twilight Pathways (Blessing), 3. Mirror of Minds (Witchfire), Neuro Disruptor

+ Troops +

Troupe [4 PL, 95pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Caress
. Player: Fusion Pistol, Harlequin’s Embrace
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Neuro Disruptor

Troupe [4 PL, 70pts]
. Lead Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Harlequin’s Caress, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol
. Player: Harlequin’s Blade, Shuriken Pistol

+ Dedicated Transport +

Starweaver [4 PL, 95pts]

++ Total: [88 PL, 2CP, 2,000pts] ++

[/expand]

Erik’s running a buttload of Troupes, which is the current build for Harlequins. Unfortunately, it’s also a really bad build for going up against Thousand Sons, since the big counters to it are “mortal wounds” and “storm bolters,” both of which I’ve got lots of. He’s also running a pair of Shadowseers, which opens me up to Wrath of Magnus.

The Mission: Tear Down Their Icons

For this game we tested out one of the Warzone Houston Layouts as best I could estimate and played Tear Dow Their Icons, the first mission in the set.

My Secondaries:

• Wrath of Magnus
• Psychic Interrogation
• Raise the Banners High

Erik’s Secondaries:

• Deadly Performance
• Take Your Places
• Retrieve Nephilim Data

Wrath is a no-brainer here; Erik can potentially double cast maledictions and trip me up but for the most part it’s free points. Psychic Interrogation is also easy as it means I can screen out the Shadowseers and hit the Solitaire/Death Jester if he puts them too far away. And Banners is just the best of the remaining options.

I’m Going Second.

There was a lot of back-and-forth in this game but ultimately every trade Erik made was a rough one and even though he was able to take out Ahriman and three of the Rubric squads he barely made a dent on the Terminators. Erik used the Death Jester to kill my Tzaangor Shaman early on, allowing the Terminator Sorcerer to really shine this game as the action-doer caster.

Early on Erik swung around the north side of the table with his Shadowseers and the south side with his Death Jester and Solitaire, but on either side he ran smack dab into Terminators. He put up a solid fight but dwindling numbers just didn’t work in his favor.

Result: 91-76, Win

That was a fairly heartening result, but I learned a few important things. The first was that it’s OK to hold back the Spawn as a backfield objective holder when there isn’t anything to threaten them. They can’t put up a banner but they can hold things down OK if needed while the Rubrics move forward instead. Also I learned that Solitaires have a 3+ invulnerable save, which is some bullshit. Erik had a couple of smart plays late game to try and keep me off Interrogation by putting his Shadowseers in Starweavers after I killed his other two characters, but I had plenty of juice to pop those transports open with mortal wounds anyways.

The Warzone setup seems… fine. It’s not my favorite, but it’s not bad, either.

Hobby Progress

In order to make this work, I needed to paint two Warpflamers – this will take me to seven and eventually I’ll just do the final three to have 10 painted, but for now I only need two more for the event, which was great because I only had about a week to get everything painted, and for two of those days I’d be in Chicago for business.

On top of that, I also wanted to touch up the rest of my army. Some of this is repair work – the lads have taken a beating over the last few months – and some of it is just improvements to get the existing army to a higher standard for paint scoring. My goal is to top 4 at the even in paint scoring, and that means I need to put more work into the army’s appearance. Some of these guys – especially the terminators – were painted pretty quickly for other events, and it’s worth spending some time touching them up. Here’s the general rundown of what I did:

Paint Two Warpflamer Rubrics

Done. I finished these guys Thursday night and they’re pretty much up to the rest of the army’s current standard.

Basing Repair

A lot of models had lost some of their basing material – particularly those with Agrellan Earth technical paint. the crackle effect is nice, but the material flakes off like crazy in my experience. I’m repairing the empty parts with Agrellan Badlands, which sticks to the base a bit better, and after I drybrush it with Reaper Polished Bone paint, it’ll all look pretty uniform.

Additional Details and Touch-ups

The Scarab Occult Terminators needed this the most. Many of them didn’t have painted gemstones (they were just painted gold), so I added those, plus some extra edge highlights where the blue plate meets the gold trim on the greaves. Finally I added freehand symbolts of Tzeench on every Terminator’s tabard. These were done using a black 0.005 Micron pen.

I also added in the shoulder stripes on one of the Terminator Champions. I’ll likely come back and do them on the other champ but for now I think it’s a nice little improvement. I don’t think I’m going to do it on the whole army though.

New OSL effects

When I suggested I was doing this, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson asked if I was doing more OSL effects on the army and while I wasn’t planning on it, as I started looking at my Icons of Flame I started to think it would make sense to add the effect to them. So I fired up the Moot Green and Warpstone Glow and got to work.

Character Touch-ups

Additionally, some of my characters also needed a bit of touching up. The Exalted Sorcerer didn’t have a shoulder icon, and the OSL on the Infernal Master was pretty rough. I took the opportunity to touch up both, and now I’m much happier with how the Infernal Master Looks. Doing two different OSL shades on him was quite a bit of fun.

The Final Army

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Overall I’m very happy with how the army turned out, and excited to take them to Warzone Houston. They’ll also probably be the army I take to Kansas City in October, unless I can make some unprecedented progress on my Black Legion between now and then. At this point there are only a few models left to paint in the army before it’s definitively just “done” – a couple Exalted Sorcerers and maybe a dozen Rubric Marines, plus another unit of Tzaangors and a Helbrute if I really want to push it. And those are all basically optional. I’m far more likely to paint another unit of Rubrics as Black Legion before I paint more Thousand Sons.

Ultimately my goal at Warzone Houston is to finish 5-1 and win Best Overall. I’ll be ecstatic if I can top 4 on Paint Score, and I go back and forth on whether I want to do any more display board work the night before the event (nah). Either way, it promises to be a fun event and I’m excited to see the local crews represent. See you on the other side, Dear Reader.

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